The black and white score gap after the no child left behind act

Abstract

The study investigates the black and white test score gap among elementary school students in the United States after 2010. A core finding of the research is that black students do worse than whites in mathematics even when environmental variables such as socioeconomic status are controlled for. The size of the raw score gap in the fall of kindergarten in mathematics is 0.526 standard deviations, with the use of controls this shrinks to 0.158 standard deviations. The score gap widens considerably among black and white students in the first two years of the formal education. The raw mathematics score gap in the spring of elementary school is 0.635 standard deviations, after controlling for a handful of factors it is reduced to 0.308 standard deviations. We also found that after the use of propensity score matching the mathematics score gap in the fall of kindergarten becomes insignificant. Intriguingly, even after propensity score matching the gap starts to widen, which might flag the results of racial homophily or consequences of premarket discrimination of black students.